


Four by Four

by opalmatrix



Category: Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Gen, Growing Up, Sisters, Storytelling, Technology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-28
Updated: 2013-04-28
Packaged: 2017-12-09 18:30:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/776633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalmatrix/pseuds/opalmatrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four voices from the Mouse Army aboard the good ship <i>Generosity of Soul</i>: they grow, they learn, and they wait for the coming of their Princess to free them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four by Four

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kastaka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kastaka/gifts).



> For Kastaka, who said: "I've always been fascinated with the mouse army and especially fic about the individuals that make it up ... ." Beta by **[smillaraaq](http://smillaraaq.livejournal.com/)** and [**Jet**](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Jet/pseuds/Jet)

#### Li-shen and Her Anger

"Clumsy girl!"

"Stupid melon!"

Li-shen looked at the broken toy dish, then at Bai-liu and Ai-ling's cross faces. She felt like her head was on fire. 

"I'm not a stupid melon!" she roared. And she stamped on the little dish. It was already broken, anyway, so it didn't matter if she broke it some more. 

One of the aunties came over at once. "Bad girl, Li-shen! If you can't play nicely, you can't play with others. Go to your room!"

She considered throwing herself on the floor and screaming, but the last time she'd tried that, two of the aunties had picked her up and carried her to her room anyway. She was bigger than most of the girls in her group but still much smaller than a grown woman, and two of them were much too much. And she hadn't been given anything to eat that night but a tiny bowl of rice, because there wasn't any rice to waste on girls who were bad. So today she went to her room as she was told, because she was hungry already and wanted to have a good supper.

It wasn't just her room, of course. She shared it with many of her sisters – so many that she couldn't count. But none of them were there, now: they were out on the deck, playing. She went and sat on her mattress, by herself.

Or rather, almost by herself. Tucked into the bedding was Girl Tiger, Li-shen's plush toy, and Li-shen's Primer. She hadn't wanted to take the special book outside. What if it fell over the edge of the deck, into the water? There was a fence made of metal bars around the play space, but although the spaces between the bars were too small for a girl to fall through, or even Girl Tiger, a book would fit, easily. She patted Girl Tiger and the Primer.

Girl Tiger was soft and still and silent. The Primer _buzzed_. She could hear it, and feel it through her fingers.

She put the book onto her lap and tucked Girl Tiger into the crook of her arm. The Primer fell open to a page past the stories that had taught her to read some simple words. There was a picture of a girl who looked like Li-shen, except that she had on a very pretty long dress, and her face had a sad, angry scowl, just the way Li-shen was feeling. Standing by the girl was a beautiful, huge tiger, with a pink ribbon tied around its head. Li-shen looked down at the top of Girl Tiger's head, with its little pink bow, and she felt a little happier.

"Li-shen, would you believe that the Lady Tiger used to be a clumsy young cub?" asked the book.

Li-shen shook her head. The beautiful tiger turned her face to Li-shen and began to speak:

>   
>  Now I am the ruler of this forest, and no one is faster or more graceful. But it wasn't always that way, Lady Li-shen. Long ago, I was big and strong, but slow and clumsy. The jackdaws and the foxes would steal up on me and pull my tail, or mock me about my size and clumsiness until I lost my temper and chased them, and so I would fall over branches or down into holes. Then they would laugh, and I would roar and cry, but I couldn't do anything to them. They were too small and fast.
> 
> One day, as I was once again bawling over my misfortunes and the cruelty of other creatures, I looked up to find an old Monkey sitting in a tree, watching me. "You should not let them take such liberties," he said.
> 
> "If I could catch them, I'd make them sorry," I growled.
> 
> "Jackdaws and foxes may be cruel, Girl Tiger, but they can be good friends. The birds can see farther than you, and the foxes can go places where you are too large to fit. It is said: If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow."
> 
> "But they hate me!" I whined. "They wouldn't ever be my friends!"
> 
> "If you were faster, and lighter on your feet, you could turn around and startle them before they could pull your tail."
> 
> "Then I could roar loudly and scare them!" I said.
> 
> "Would that make them want to be your friends?"
> 
> "No," I said.
> 
> "What if you could turn around and startle them with a somersault instead? I can teach you that." The old Monkey turned a beautiful somersault, right there on the branch.
> 
> "Oh yes, Monkey! Teach me that!"

Li-shen hugged Girl Tiger tightly. "Did you learn to turn a somersault?" she asked the Primer.

"I did! Watch, and I will show you how to do it, too," said the Lady Tiger.

#### Ai-ling and Her Struggles

"Is it two halves, Teacher?"

Miss Gu looked tired and angry. "No, Ai-ling! It is not two halves, and it was not five halves, and it was not four halves! You are just guessing. Use your brain!"

Ai-ling had started to think that whatever was in her own head, it was not a brain. "I'm sorry, Teacher. I'm trying terribly hard."

The teacher sighed. "I know, Ai-ling. Study your exercises again. Does someone else know?"

Shu-yue's hand shot up. Shu-yue slept on the mat next to Ai-ling's. She was a quiet girl, except in class. She was much more clever than Ai-ling.

"Shu-yue?"

"Three halves, teacher!"

"Very god, Shu-yue! How about nine fourths?"

Shu-yue hesitated, but then she said, clearly, "That can't be said in halves. But ... four halves plus one fourth?"

"Excellent! Now, how about ... ."

Ai-ling looked down at her workbook, with its pictures of circles and squares chopped into pieces. There were numbers, too, but they made no sense. None of it made any sense!

At break, most of the girls ran to the Deck 3 playroom to run and shout and throw balls, or skip rope, or play hand-clapping. A few stayed behind and drew pictures, or read. Shu-yue was looking at her Primer. Li-shen was doing some sort of exercises at the back of the room. Ai-ling was certain that Miss Gu would think Ai-ling should be reviewing her lessons, so she made sure that the teacher was immersed in her papers before she slowly drew out her own Primer.

Last night, Lily Lamb had been telling her a story about a tiny girl who lived with an old Field Mouse who had rescued her. The Mouse wanted Little Thumb to marry an old Mole, but Little Thumb didn't like him. Ai-ling knew that marrying the Mole was the right thing for Little Thumb to do, but she hoped that the girl wouldn't have to do it.

"Aren't you supposed to be studying?"

Ai-ling hastily shut her book, but it wasn't the teacher: it was Li-shen. She was so big, she loomed over Ai-ling almost like a grown-up. She was kind of scary sometimes, especially when she lost her temper. "What good would it do?" whispered Ai-Ling. "I can't learn maths. I'm too stupid."

Li-shen sat down on the desk bench next to her and gently nudged Ai-ling with her strong shoulder. "I couldn't do maths either. Remember the lesson about negative numbers? Everyone stared at me. My face was all hot."

Ai-ling remembered. "Yes. But then you knew them, next time Teacher Gu asked."

"Yup. I got help."

"From?"

"Ask your Primer, silly. It's not just a storybook, you know."

Slowly, Ai-ling opened the book again. Lily looked up from the page at her. She had soft, white fleece with a black spot on her back, a sweet black face, and a wreath of blue flowers around her neck. "Do you have a question about maths, Ai-ling?"

She felt like she was going to cry, she was so relieved. "Can you make me understand fractions, Lily?"

"No. But Shu-yue's friend Mr. Ears can."

Two desks up, Shu-yue turned around. She looked surprised. "Ai-ling, would you like me to show you how I learned fractions?"

Ai-ling's face was hot, but Shu-yue didn't sound like she thought Ai-ling was stupid. "I ... yes. Please."

Shu-yue came over and sat next to Ai-ling on the other side of the bench. Now there were three little girls on the page of Ai-ling's Primer, and they were all wearing beautiful robes, like the ladies in a fairy tale book. Lily was sitting on the ground next to the Lady Ai-ling, and a big, graceful tiger was yawning and settling down under a tree nearby. A picture of a large rabbit with a clever face was in the center of the page. He wore black trousers, a black tunic, and a neat little black cap between his long ears.

"That's Mr. Ears," said Shu-yue. But Ai-ling knew that. She had seen him tucked under the quilt on Shu-yue's mattress. The rabbit looked out at Ai-ling with a kind smile, as though he were happy to meet her.

>   
> Lady Ai-ling, let me tell you a story. You like stories, don't you? Let me tell you what happened when I first met the Princess Nell. She approached me with a terrible difficulty. She had a dozen hungry children under her care, but only a certain amount of food. Of course she did not want to favor any of her children, because a Princess must be both kind and just ... .

#### Yi-shi and Her Sorrows

The girls from Room 4-27 were watching a passive about how children in different parts of the world had been raised throughout history. Many of the practices struck Yi-shi as both weird and cruel, from the physical punishments imposed on youngsters in Europe and western Asia to the shocking lack of self-control fostered in girls and boys during the late 20th century in America. When the vid showed a group of boys who had been tortured because they didn't want to become child soldiers in a war, Yi-shi's stomach churned. Their eyes were blank with horror and pain, and they each had at least one limb ending in a stump.

The narrator calmly said that the grown-up soldiers had chopped off the boys' hands and feet with machetes: heavy knives meant for cutting through vegetation.

Yi-shi's breath was knocked from her chest, and she got up and ran out of the room.

She had no idea where she was going to go. There was no way she could hide from the suffering children's eyes. This was real, this was a fact, and she knew that there were places in the world where things like this still happened to people.

She ran to one of the bathrooms, where she poured cold water from a sink over her wrists and splashed it onto her hot face and neck. She would probably get into trouble for that too, because it was a waste of clean water. She dried herself with one of the clean towels – another waste, towels took water and energy to clean – and went into one of the toilet stalls. She didn't shut and latch the door, because someone would notice that. She huddled on the floor at the back corner, and then she started to cry.

Her Primer was in her tunic pocket. It felt warm and comforting. She wiped her fingers on some toilet tissue and pulled out the little book. When it fell open, she saw a picture of the Primer's Yi-shi – Lady Yi-shi – standing in the middle of a rainstorm. She looked cold, and Yi-shi saw that Snakey was curled up near her feet. The plush Snakey was a plump, soft striped tube, with a little face. Most of the other girls said Snakey was a worm or a caterpillar, but in the Primer, she was a snake a meter long, with shining scales in all the colors of a rainbow, and a low, beautiful voice.

"On their journey to find Princess Nell, Lady Yi-shi and Snakey were caught in a terrible storm. As the rain fell, the air became colder and colder. Yi-shi felt terrible, but Snakey was smaller, and cold-blooded. Soon she could hardly move," said the Primer.

"Yi-shi p-p-picked Snakey up and tucked Snakey inside her tunic," said Yi-shi.

"Snakey became warmer, but Lady Yi-shi was getting colder and colder herself. Soon she would not be able to keep her friend warm."

"I look for shelter," Yi-shi said.

The Primer showed her the land around the barren patch of ground where Lady Yi-shi was standing. It was a land as empty as the open ocean seen from the deck of _Generosity of Soul_ when she put out to sea. Yi-shi's eyes filled with tears again as she looked at the images.

>   
>  We need help," said Snakey. "If we call for help, maybe one of your sisters will hear us."
> 
> "We just need the rain to stop," said Lady Yi-shi.
> 
> "No one can stop the rain, Lady Yi-shi," said Snakey. "You are one girl, and the storms of the world have the energy of the Sun behind them."
> 
> "Then we are lost!" said Lady Yi-shi, in despair. "I led us wrong! There's too much cold and darkness. It will destroy us!"
> 
> "Never say that," said Snakey. "You have your brain. You have your heart and soul. Because of that, you have people who care about you."

The outer door opened. "Yi-shi?"

It was Ai-ling. She had known Ai-ling forever, since they were babies. But they were getting to be big girls now: Yi-shi was ashamed to have Ai-ling see her like this, crying on the floor of the bathroom.

Snakey's voice from the Primer was a tiny whisper. Yi-shi could see that shining colors of her scales were turning dull and lifeless. "Sometimes you have to ask for help."

Ai-ling stepped into the bathroom. Maybe she was looking around. Then Yi-shi heard Ai-ling's footsteps again, going away. Yi-shi gulped down her tears. "I'm here," she tried to say. The words didn't come out very well, but Ai-ling's footsteps stopped and then started up again, coming toward the stall.

The door opened, and Ai-ling looked down at her. Then she went down on her knees next to Yi-shi and started to hand her wads of toilet tissue. Yi-shi blew her nose many times and mopped her cheeks. "Is Teacher Yan mad?"

"I don't know. I don't care," said Ai-ling. "Come on. It's sunny outside."

She pulled Yi-shi to her feet. She had to pull hard because Ai-ling was little and Yi-shi was middle-sized, but she did it. Then she held Yi-shi's hand as they went up the gangway, and when they were out on deck, she tugged Yi-shi over to the garden, which was a bunch of troughs with different types of plants growing in them, so that the girls could learn about botany. The two of them sat down between two of the troughs. The plants would hide them unless someone came right over to the garden.

They sat shoulder to shoulder, and the sun was warm on their arms and their updrawn knees. Ai-ling took out her Primer and opened it, then showed Yi-shi the page. Lady Yi-shi and Snakey were wrapped in warm blankets inside a kind of tent. Lady Ai-ling and Lily Lamb were feeding them hot soup. Yi-shi almost smiled. "Snakes can't eat soup," she said.

"Well, this isn't a tent, either," said Ai-ling. "The Primers are like that, sometimes. Yi-shi, those boys: that's not going to happen to us."

"We're learning to fight."

"But we're learning to fight people who are evil. They were trying to make those boys fight good people."

"Even if it's not happening to us, it's happening to other children, in other places. There are so many bad things happening to people, all over the world. I can't not think about it."

"That's because you have a soft heart," said Ai-ling, and put her arm around Yi-shi's shoulder. "Lily says it's good to worry about injustice."

"But worrying doesn't help! The cruelty all over the world is like a big storm. Snakey said that one girl can't fight a storm. And she was right." Yi-shen's eyes were burning again.

"That can't be all of it. The Primers are telling us all this stuff because there's something we need to do."

Yi-shi opened her own Primer. She had the same picture that Ai-ling had, but now Snakey spoke to her. "That's why you need to find Princess Nell, Lady Yi-shi: you, and Ai-ling, and Li-shen, and Shu-yue, and all your sisters, once you and the Princess are old enough. You are the Mouse Army, and Princess Nell will lead you to fight cruelty and injustice. No one can stop a storm, but together, you can lead others to shelter, so the storm will not harm them."

The page facing the picture of Primer Ai-Ling and Yi-shi and their Night Friends suddenly blossomed with another picture, a tall girl with long brown hair flowing out behind her as though the wind were blowing, dressed simply in a tunic and trousers. She had a sword in one hand and a knife in the other, and her light brown eyes were gazing at something far away. She didn't look lost or overwhelmed: she looked determined and strong, and Yi-shi wanted to give this Princess the whole of her sore and tender heart.

#### Shu-yue and Her Message

Shu-yue sat on a tall stool in the back of the _Generosity of Soul_ communications room with a pair of headphones on and a ractive display in front of her. The display had sixteen subdisplays embedded in it, and by touching them, she could make the images larger or smaller, or pan the viewpoint. The audio feed would change to match the shift in displays. If she double-tapped a subdisplay, she was able to change to another data source entirely. A tap near the top left corner of a subdisplay would send the current feed to the master console. She could speak into the microphone poised in front of her mouth and add her own observations, as well.

Three other people in the room, all adults, sat on identical stools, before identical displays. They were all working, providing information that would be assembled and sent to the master of the fleet, Dr. X. Shu-yue's information was only stored for later analysis. She was still learning. The room was full of a low muttering as the observers poured the essence of the events of the world into the nerve center of the Celestial Kingdom.

Shu-yue was focused on the advance of the Fists today. Their progress was of great interest to the Celestial Kingdom. But something else had been occupying her attention for her last few shifts. Because of her tender years, her teachers did not expect her to work more than two hours every day. Recently, this had been causing her a great deal of frustration, because she thought she was starting to detect something of great interest that did not necessarily have to do with her main assignment. Every time she came on shift, someone would make sure that her data feeds were focused on the Fist situation and would bring her up to speed on what had happened in that arena, but no one else was interested in reports of popular culture from Pudong. 

Lately she had been feeling as she imagined an ancient navigator of ships would feel, working his way between shoals and sandbars in a fog, noting little changes in the ripples of what ocean he could see near the hull of the ship, and feeling the shifts of the wind and and the changes in the moisture of the air. She had been talking to her Primer each evening about what she had learned, and Mr. Ears had encouraged her, for they were searching for Princess Nell. Shu-yue had systematically quartered the world, then Asia, then the old region once called China, confirming her focus with Mr. Ears each step of the way. He said he did not know what they were looking for, but he would know once she had found it. The search had led her to Pudong.

Of course her elders knew what she was watching on her monitors. All she did here was recorded. But not one of them had a Primer.

Today, the camera in Pudong was focused on a five-story concrete apartment block. Shu-yue knew that it was called Madame Ping's. Behind those blandly ugly windows were women and girls who entertained men with a variety of adult games. Shu-yue had been watching the windows, one by one by one, for nearly a month now, her eyes darting back and forth between images of the Fists ripping their way across the countryside and those of Madame Ping's employees. They read magazines or sometimes actual books. They tried on clothes. They watched passives or did ractives. They performed exercises. They washed. They made up their faces. They rehearsed scenes. 

For the first few days, it had been fascinating. Now Shu-yue found it as interesting as watching the sea birds diving fruitlessly for non-existent garbage in the wake of the ship. All of the ships housing the Mouse Army used their waste with utmost efficiency. Shu-yue knew exactly how.

Now, she glanced away from a scene of a Fist treating a young Nipponese businessman as a punching bag, while two more Fists held him firmly by the arms, and spotted in one of Madame Ping's windows a young woman reading a book . Just as she was about to look away, she saw a flicker of movement on the visible page of the book.

So the book was ractive. That was a little bit different. She made that subdisplay zoom in on the view of the book.

Her heart was beating in her throat. On the page, a girl with long hair was riding a horse through a storm.

> _P rincess Nell rode North into an explosive thunderstorm. The horses were driven nearly mad with terror by the cannonlike explosions of thunder and the unearthly blue flashes of the lightning, but with a firm hand and a soothing voice in the ear, Nell urged them forward. The cairns of bones strewn along the roadside were evidence that this mountain pass was no place to dawdle ... _

The Primer's voice spoke in Shu-yue's mind's ear, perfectly following the scene that was unfolding on the distant woman's page.

At the end of the shift, Shu-yue hurried back to her room. The 128 mattresses in their orderly rows and columns were mostly unoccupied in the early evening. On the mattress next to Shu-yue's, Ai-ling was sewing, her needle flashing as she set the neat, tiny stitches into the mend. Yi-shi was doing breathing exercises, and Li-shen was on her belly reading her Primer, her nose only a couple of centimeters from the page. Shu-yue pulled out her own Primer and opened it. The scene on the page was the one she had just watched on the Pudong subdisplay. "Mr. Ears?"

The other three looked up at the sound of her voice. "What's up?" asked Li-shen.

"Did something happen today?" Yi-shi opened her eyes.

Ai-ling folded her sewing carefully and came over to sit next to Shu-Yue. "You found something."

On the Primer page, the images of Princess Nell stilled and shrank. Mr. Ears hopped into opposite page, his whiskers trembling with excitement. "You have found her!"

"Now what happens?"

Images and instructions scrolled onto the pages. They would take over _Generosity of Soul_ , and contact the other ships of the Mouse Army, using the plans that the Primers had helped them develop during the past couple of years. They would contact their comrades on the other ships, with the Primers as a medium of information transfer, and help them to do the same. The ships would be directed toward Pudong. They would go ashore ... .

On other mattresses, other girls' eyes focussed on their Primers. Young, clear voices asked questions and answered them, often in the same breath. Girls ran out of the room to gather their sisters, and a high-pitched murmur swelled and grew all over the ship, as data passed from node to node of the Mouse Army.

Yi-shi leapt to her feet as girls and more girls crowded into the room. She raised her Primer high, showing a picture of Princess Nell reading aloud from a book before a great crowd of mice. A violent thunderclap and a rush of wind knocked the Princess flat on her back. And the mice in the Primer all changed into girls. The girls in the room cheered along with their counterparts on the page. "Our Princess has summoned us! Are we ready to follow her?" shouted Yi-Shi, and her voice was like a trumpet at dawn, and the girls all answered with one voice:

"We are ready! Yes!"

 

**Author's Note:**

>  **Afterword:** I was reading some online commentary about this book after my re-read for rarewomen, and one person on Wikipedia pointed out this line, where Hackworth is acquiescing to Dr. X's demand that he create Primers for the Mouse Army: "John Percival Hackworth, almost without thinking about it and without appreciating the ramifications of what he was doing, devised a trick and slipped it in under the radar of the Judge and Dr. X and all of the other people in the theatre, who were better at noticing tricks than most other people in the world." The commenter seemed to think that the trick was to make the girls of the Mouse Army less self-motivated and independent than Nell, in the guide of making them better followers of Confucianism, but it occurred to me that the trick was as I have shown here: to allow the Mouse Army to learn about Nell, motivate them to serve her, and to help them find her when the time came.


End file.
